2021 Inclusive Excellence Summit

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Circular design with people holding hands and the words on the outside: "Inclusive Excellence Summit, Living Our Commitment".

Date: Thursday, April 8, 2021

Location: Zoom (online)

Intended Audience: UB Community

UB's second Inclusive Excellence Summit, “Living our Commitment” consisted of 25 sessions and workshops that highlighted practices, research, and initiatives across the university that support diversity and inclusion, in addition to a keynote address by CDI Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Dr. Waverly Duck. This was an opportunity for faculty, staff, and students to come together as a community to promote understanding and to learn about the innovative methods and practices being developed to foster multiculturalism and diversity at UB. 

Summit Program
Photo of Waverly Duck smiling.

Dr. Waverly Duck is an urban sociologist, a Distinguished Visiting Scholar with UB's Center for Diversity Innovation, and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of No Way Out: Precarious Living in the Shadow of Poverty and Drug Dealing (University of Chicago Press, 2015), which was a finalist for the Society for the Study of Social Problems 2016 C. Wright Mills Book Award. His new book on unconscious racism, Tacit Racism, co-authored with Anne Rawls, is due out in May of 2020 with the University of Chicago Press. His current research involves several projects focusing on gentrification, displacement, and food apartheid. Like his earlier work, his most recent research investigates the challenges faced by socially marginal groups. However, it is more directly concerned with how residents of marginalized communities identify problems and what they think are viable solutions.

The American Diversity and Design Annual Competition challenges students to apply their skills and creativity to tackle a pressing issue related to diversity and design. The competition is designed for students from all majors. For the 2021 competition, students taking the 'Diversity & Design' undergraduate course at the University at Buffalo were asked to develop a proposal for a memorial honoring those from underrepresented populations who were lost to COVID-19. 

Concurrent Sessions